The Nobodies

3. Miguel Finds Something Cool

Miguel

I know how to say "I don't want to go to New Zealand" in four different languages.

I'm scribbling into my workbook when this occurs to me. My Algebra teacher, Mr. Cromwell, changes to a different PowerPoint slide before I'm done copying the last one. Which is fine. It's only another linear equation. From a chapter in yet another textbook I'd already taught myself whilst waiting around at an airport.

I sigh.

How would I say it in French? Je ne veux pas aller en Nouvelle-Zélande. In the three weeks my mom and dad spent collecting footage for a BBC documentary on antiquated castles along the north of France, there'd been plenty of wind but no Wi-Fi. I'd had nothing to do except be home-schooled by my French tutor, who was hungover and irritable. My pronunciations had gotten me laughed off of set.

In Spanish, you'd say it as yo no quiero ir a Nueva Zelanda. There's a handful of students in my cohort who speak Spanish fluently. They insert fast, derivative slang into their English, calling younger sisters pubic hair, older cousins idiots of the ass. On my first day, after Jessica Marín finished leading my tour of the school, she'd invited me to her sister's quinceañera. She'd assumed because we looked alike that we were alike.

I'd almost gone along with it, just to belong somewhere.

Every day, people ask me where I'm from. I'm always polite about it. I say I'm Filipino because it's easier; that's where my parents were born and raised. But I can't call the Philippines my country if it's not the place I'm from. My mom tells me she'd gotten pregnant in Argentina, had violent morning sickness from Brussels to Mozambique, and given birth to me in Hong Kong. I've never even met my Lolo and Lola—I don't think I ever will.

What does that make me? A cultural refugee?

Mom and Dad speak Tagalog at home. When the going is good, they sing it to one another in the kitchen. Maybe what I should really say is, Mama, Papa, ayokong sumama sayo sa New Zealand.

Anyway, why the linguistics lesson?

Because English is a terrible first language. It doesn't accurately express how much the thought of packing my stuff, getting up early, driving to the airport, hauling heavy recording equipment onto the conveyor scale, and sitting in stony silence through three layovers makes me want to projectile vomit my almusal.

Wow.

Even I'm aware how whiny and petulant I sound.

I remember that travel is a luxury most people never afford. Except my heart isn't in it. Luxury to me feels like this pen in my hand, the paper underneath it, the desk supporting my weight. It's the knowledge that for weeks and months of my life, I can take all of this for granted. That I'll wake up tomorrow and do nothing except go to the same school as the day before.

Not load and unload a van full of equipment. Not check out of a hotel at four in the morning.

English isn't good enough to say how I'd rather die than be stuck in a hotel room pretending everything's normal. How I refuse to seem ungrateful for not wanting to be the glue binding my parents through their last assignment.

God, I really do sound whiny.

Maybe there's a reason I can't tell my parents this.

"Do you know why we take you everywhere with us?" Mom had once hissed at me. Folding Dad's clothes into his suitcase while he showered in the other room. "Because your father married his job first. We're the second family."